Yes We Can (But We Already Knew That)

Can women be funny? It’s a question so
brain-numbingly idiotic that it’s best left ignored, but that’s
difficult when multiple facets of the media — from pop culture bloggers
to comedians on Twitter — recycle the “debate” over and over again.

A sense of humor and timing is developed
over many years, but I believe most people are inclined to be funny or
not from an early age. As kids we generally act a certain way to either
gain attention (or to not be noticed — but that’s a notion I simply
can’t imagine).

One can do this by appearing intelligent
and highly applied, sweet and attractive, athletic or humorous.
Stereotypically, girls tend to fall into the first two subdued
categories while boisterous boys are expected to fill the latter roles.
Maybe it’s this trend that accounts for the high man-to-woman ratio on
any comedy club calendar.

Like many traits, humor likely starts in
the home, and I certainly come from a family that values the funny.
We’ve memorized many a movie line to quote at the perfect moment and we
pick on each other lovingly.

My parents had weird rules about what I
was allowed to watch on television: no MTV until I was nearly in high
school, yet I had my Linda Richman “Coffee Talk” impression down to a
science by age 5. I’ve been exposed to comedy — humorous men and comedic
women — as far back as I can remember, and dubbed the funny kid just as
long.

Throughout my tween years (though the
term hadn’t been invented yet) if I sought attention from someone, I
wasn’t confident enough to offer homework help, cute enough to simply
bat my eyes or sporty enough to talk college basketball.

And
while during my insecure younger years I might have preferred an
image-based superlative, I loved to make people laugh and I wanted to be
good at it. I recognized early on that my goofy nature set me apart
from most kids, but I never felt like it was something that made me
different from other girls — just different in general.

It’s this backstory that makes me so
invested in the question of women being funny — and not just the
ridiculous debate itself, but the very notion that women are supposedly
engaging in conversations about whether or not we have basic abilities.
Yes, some women are funny. Just like some women can carry a tune,
some can drive a car and some don’t really care for cabbage. Some men
are funny, too, but for whatever reason the masses don’t respond to a
lackluster dude comic by questioning humor in the entire male
population.

If some current popular columnist wrote
about how women make perfectly capable doctors, some might be inclined
to question, “Are there people who didn’t already know this?” And
because more people have greater access to media online, there will
always be people crawling out of the woodwork to provide an opposition,
creating a dispute where we didn’t need one.

The same goes for funny femmes. At the
risk of tokenizing these women, one would think between Lucille Ball,
Phyllis Diller and the inaugural cast of women on Saturday Night Live,
this case should have been closed for years. Yet today, we still read
about Kristen Wiig/Tina Fey/whichever funny woman du jour “ending this
question once and for all.” To many, this might seem like a positive
sign. Sadly, though, the mere acknowledgement of this ludicrous faux
debate leads me to believe that the “proof” of funny women will still be
documented for years to come.

As a general rule, increased discourse
about any important topic is ultimately positive. But do we (as women,
as humor lovers, as humans) need to make a platform for every topic that
exists? It almost seems like making blanket statements intended to be
empowering just end up providing space for some idiot to create a
conflicting view.

So, please, stop asking whether women can
do things we already know they can. Don’t affirm what is already
obvious. Yes, women can be funny (or any number of adjectives), but not
all of them are.

And that’s OK, because while I never got
really hot or athletic, I can still drop a movie quote like a boss and I
will always seek attention.